Sesame Street: Is Public-Private Partnership the Holy Grail for Kids Media?
Part 2: The YouTube Spanner
In my last newsletter I wrote extensively about the Sesame Street-Netflix public-private partnership. A fantastic collaboration! Netflix get one of the most beloved kids brands in America. Sesame Street get the financial buy-in they need to keep delivering quality content to millions of kids. And amongst it all, PBS keeps, or in fact improves, its Sesame Street rights position, delivering the broadest possible free access to this wonderful IP right in line with Netflix. That last part might sound like a mighty concession by Netflix, going day and date with PBS, but as I explained in my opinion it’s not. It’s actually a smart strategy that could catalyze this distribution approach to the benefit of all involved, and with it provide a very compelling model for kids media going forward.
This announcement hit a little differently over the weekend, when news broke that Netflix will be losing CoComelon to Disney+ from 2027. CoComelon has been the top engagement driver in kids content for Netflix since it launched on the platform in 2020. I’ve written about this a lot. Its preschool target very much overlaps with that of Sesame Street, though I don’t think anyone would disagree that the latter is the poster child of excellence in kids content. There are far-reaching implications of this development which will need to play out, but if anything it underscores the significance of the Sesame Street get for Netflix.
This isn’t actually the first time Netflix have dabbled in this type of public-private collaborations for kids content. In recent years they’ve played pretty nicely with Aardman and the BBC on Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl in varying windowing capacities. Awesome that Netflix have helped bankroll legacy creative excellence in UK animation and bring it en masse to the audience that love it the most. And smart, to be an established home for that content whenever audiences fancy reaching for it. But the question is, does this approach only work for heritage content with an established audience? Is it a case of streamers cherry-picking only the cultural crown jewels and leveraging them for their own gain? Nope… I have another case study…
Bluey is in fact the A+ example of a public service broadcaster (PSB) sparking an original IP from scratch, with a streamer lighting the flame globally. Australia’s ABC struck the match, BBC Studios picked up the torch, and Disney+, as we all know, ran it home in a blaze of glory. The most hopeful thing about this case study is that it was an original IP, with best-in-class storytelling and execution, built to stunning commercial opportunity. With great collaboration comes great payoff, and the chance to strike gold with an original should be worth a shot or two. Particularly when it brings TV of this quality to audiences globally.
There’s one element of the Sesame Street-Netflix deal, conspicuous by its absence… It’s the same thing that sits at the centre of of CoComelon’s success: YouTube. PBS isn’t the biggest free media platform in the US; YouTube is. YouTube is actually the biggest free media platform in the world an through YouTube Sesame Street can reach the biggest majority of kids precisely where they already are. The monetization model of YouTube isn’t comfortable for a brand like Sesame in isolation, and they do already have a strong presence there with full episodes, lives, shorts, nearly 27M subscribers and all the mod cons.
This is where future collaboration between PSBs and streamers on original IP could come a cropper. PSB mandates are completely locally focused, which tends to put a spanner in the works of any global YouTube rights. It’s highly advisable to be global on YouTube, particularly if you’re a new brand, because that’s what the algorithm favors. Also, geo-blocking the country where you’re getting PSB exposure puts you at a double disadvantage as you’re losing all the folks who know about you because they saw you on their local channel. Bluey has a hardcore exclusion from Australia on YouTube that continues to this day. It’s something that the show has managed to overcome, and Australia being a much smaller global audience size makes it easier to swallow than it would be for, say, the US or UK. Any public-private partnership on an original IP needs to productively address this or risk launching their brand with clipped wings from the outset.
This is not a blueprint for despair, it’s a blueprint for hope with a side portion of caution. The Netflix-PBS-Sesame Workshop partnership brings focus to both the potential and the limitations of this collaborative model. While dual windowing creates accessibility and discovery advantages, the elephant in the room remains YouTube—the platform where children actually spend much of their viewing time. Public service works best when it’s where the public are, so hopefully there’s scope to find a way through. The future of children’s media may well depend on these public-private partnerships evolving to embrace all platforms where young audiences gather. In today’s media climate, the main way to make great content prosper is to make great content commercially viable. For the next generation of iconic children’s content to emerge, we’ll need the creative courage of public broadcasters, the global reach of streaming platforms, and the discovery power of YouTube all working in harmony—a complex challenge, but one with Bluey- or even Sesame Street-sized rewards.